


remember spring swaps snow for leaves

by Aramley



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus and Esca in their first winter on their own farm. <i> He wants something different now, and new: something not shaped by any other hands than his and Esca's.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	remember spring swaps snow for leaves

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Ninth Eagle Fanmedia challenge. Originally posted [here](http://aramleys-words.livejournal.com/18724.html) on LJ.

"She's sharpening her teeth," Esca says, meaning it as a teasing warning; Marcus's supposed Roman softness is a favourite joke. Marcus thinks, let him laugh, because of the two of them, which one is it who marched through a winter in the Germanies?

Still, he was younger then; at least, he had fewer scars.

-

Esca had warned that they wouldn't be independent for a year at least, and he's right; what's left over of Marcus's army settlement after buying the farm goes by the way of keeping them in grain and feed store, and with luck Esca's hunting can take care of the rest. It'll be lean, but then if they'd wanted luxury they'd have stayed another season in Calleva.

Aquila had advised them to buy a going concern, by which he meant some neat profitable little villa farm that ran itself, and made enough money for colour on the walls and a serviceable bath-house. In another life perhaps that would have been what Marcus wanted, too, but he's not the person he was, or might have been. He wants something different now, and new: something not shaped by any other hands than his and Esca's.

-

The days shrink, and when true winter comes in like a wolf at last it's no good reminding himself of longer marches through harsher seasons. Not with a leg that aches in the chill, and cramps with over-exertion.

"Do you think I'm an invalid?" he snaps, when Esca delegates the less strenuous tasks to him on days when the pain comes. Esca just raises an eyebrow, mutely eloquent, and never relents. It's times like these that Marcus can see how Esca ended up in a gladiator's pit as opposed to the more sedate forms of slavery, but these are the sort of thoughts you keep to yourself around Esca if you don't want a matching set of bruises for your eye and your pride.

He repents of those sorts of thoughts later, anyway, when the day's work is done and they're settled companionably at the hearth with the old wound aching, but less than it might.

Esca says, "Come here, you stubborn idiot, let me," and with a rough, affectionate touch he works the knots and pains out of the scar tissue and the strained muscle. Marcus's protests catch in his throat with his hitching breath. He tries to remember that the hard days are over, and that Esca's a comfort he doesn't have to live without.

From there, matters generally progress. Well, there are ways and ways of keeping warm.

-

By the grace of some god (they can argue later over which) winter slinks out again at last, lean-flanked and unsatisfied.

"I smell spring," Esca says one morning, a low rumble through his chest where it presses up against Marcus's.

In the huddled warmth of their shared pallet, Marcus smells furs and Esca's body. "How can you tell?"

"I can tell," Esca says, with such an infuriating certainty that Marcus tumbles him over again to get rid of that expression and find him a more shivering, more appealing one.

But when they emerge from the little house, later than usual, Marcus thinks Esca might be right after all. The sky is brilliant, and little glittering drops of snow-melt drip from the eaves. The world feels tremulous, poised. Marcus smiles, thinking that under the snow their land lies frozen, waiting.

It's a beginning.


End file.
